Veloviewer Explorer Squares

I only recently discovered Veloviewer Explorer Tiles. I’m sort of torn at the moment over if it’s something I want to pursue more.

In the main I like it as having something that helps push you towards trying out new routes and going to new places is certainly a good thing. Having a challenge that rewards exploring rather than speed, distance or altitude is somewhat refreshing. It can become very easy to get “stuck” in doing your normal routes; climbing that hill you like the challenge of, wanting to stop at that cafe that has that cake you like, that great descent or that awesome view. The one niggle I have with it though is how it can lead you to ride places that actually have very little ride value, other than collecting the squares.

I noticed that I was missing a few squares that would take me from 7×7 to 10×10. Turns out that a clump of these squares were right in the middle of an urban conurbation. I did think to myself as I was planning the route, that maybe there was a reason I hadn’t ridden there before but I carried on regardless. In fairness, the first part of it was actually quite a nice park that I didn’t know existed but after that, I basically took a tour of the best that Redditch has to offer by the way of commercial parks and shit housing estates. I did go onto to find some other nice bits of the countryside I hadn’t ridden before that linked other areas I knew, so it wasn’t all bad but it did get me thinking.

I suppose that whenever you plan a new route there is always a risk you choose a bad turn here and there which doesn’t quite give you what you are looking for but I also think it could be quite easy to get blinded by the collecting of the squares and not really looking quite hard enough at where you are planning to ride. I did wonder if maybe it depends on what sort of area you live in. Does living in an urban area make you more prone to ending up in crappy places because there are more places that one might consider crappy to ride a bike? Is visiting the site of your local Screw-Fix, Jewsons and Homebase just the equivalent of some unexpected boggy hike-a-bike? I have done a couple of rides that I knew were very urban areas of suburbia, again to grab a square or two but actually these turned out to be good rides. There weren’t notable examples of postmodern architecture or anything but they weren’t pebble-dashed council houses either and actually it was kind of nice to get to know a little more about the sprawling mass of a city that I live in.

I can see myself occasionally grabbing one or two squares that might require a little detour. Occasionally I might be lacking inspiration and so plan collection route, but on the whole, I don’t think that I’m going to go out of my way to collect squares, just ride and let nature take its course.